Who Was the Most Popular ’90s Country Artist? We Checked

It's got to be Garth Brooks, right? Country music of the 1990s was defined by the class of 1989, which included Brooks, Clint Black and Alan Jackson, but only one of those men has the record for most Entertainer of the Year awards.

By some metrics, the Oklahoma native may be the most successful, but in terms of most weeks spent at No. 1 on the country airplay chart, he ranks third — barely. We added up all the songs across 520 weeks and found that one artist ruled nearly 10 percent of the time. The video above breaks it down in under two minutes.

Brooks & Dunn, Tim McGraw, Shania Twain and Faith HIll also fair well on this list of '90s stars. You'll find several well-known '80s stars did well in the decade's first half, which is to be expected. Reba McEntire and Alabama are among the more popular '90s country music artists, but they didn't top this data. Important to note is that in January 1990, the airplay charts started to be tabulated using data from Nielsen instead of data reported by radio programmers. This took the human element out of reporting airplay, which led to a massive change in the industry.

This list is based on reported country airplay charts at Billboard. Sales figures are not included in this data. Duets and multi-artist collaborations count for all artists involved. Watch, subscribe and enjoy a playlist of 50 great country songs from the 1980s below. And if you're wondering who scored the spent the most weeks at No. 1 in the '00s, stay tuned.